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Tag Archives: essere or avere

Using The Passato Prossimo In Italian – Part 1 Posted by on Jun 12, 2018

Il passato prossimo, known as the present perfect in English, is not a particularly complex construction. The key lies in knowing which auxiliary verb to use: essere or avere. In today’s article, rather than talking about the often confusing topic of transitive and intransitive verbs and how they affect the choice of which auxiliary to…

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To Be or to Have? Part 2 Posted by on Feb 17, 2014

As promised in Part 1 of this blog, today we’re going to look at some more verbs which use both essere and avere in the passato prossimo. Let’s dive straight in: 1. suonare = to play, to ring. This is a transitive verb, so it’s normally built with the verb avere: Giovanni ha suonato la…

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To Be or to Have? Posted by on Feb 7, 2014

If you’re learning Italian, knowing when to use essere or avere when talking about the past in the present perfect (Passato prossimo) is always a challenge. Should I say “Giovanni è vissuto in Inghilterra dal 2002 al 2007” or “Giovanni ha vissuto in Inghilterra dal 2002 al 2007”? I remember once, when I was teaching…

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